Privacy Policy
Last Updated: February 8, 2011
This is the Privacy Policy of the EAPlan website (the “Site”), operated by BCPLAN LLC, (together with our affiliates and subsidiaries, “EAPlan”, “we”, “us”, “our” and terms of similar meaning) and our related products and services. It describes the information that we collect from you as part of the normal operation of our Site, and how we use and disclose this information.
By accepting the Privacy Policy in registration or by visiting and using the Site, you expressly consent to our collection, use and disclosure of your personal information in accordance with this Privacy Policy. This Privacy Policy is incorporated into and subject to our Terms of Use.
In this Privacy Policy, we use the following terms to describe different types of visitors to our Site. Our customers are called “Subscribers” and our Subscribers’ customers are called “Customers”. We use the word “staff” to describe persons to whom Subscribers give “staff” access on the Site. Together with registered users of our forum or other interactive areas of the Site, these people are collectively described in this Privacy Policy as “Users” of our Site.
How We Use Your Information
We use personal information in the file we maintain about you, and other information we obtain from your current and past activities on the Site, to provide to you the services offered by the Site; resolve service and billing disputes; troubleshoot problems; bill any amounts due from you; measure consumer interest in our products and services, inform you about online and offline offers, products, services, events and updates; deliver information to you that, in some cases, is relevant to your interests, such as product news; customize your experience; detect and protect us against error, fraud and other criminal activity; enforce our Terms of Use; provide you with system or administrative messages, and as otherwise described to you at the time of collection. On occasion we use email address or other contact information to contact our Users to ask them for their input on our services, to forward to them media opportunities, and even to invite them to dinner.
We may also use personal information about you to improve our marketing and promotional efforts, to analyze Site usage, to improve our content and product offerings, and to customize the Site’s content, layout, and services. These uses improve the Site and better tailor it to meet your needs, so as to provide you with a smooth, efficient, safe and customized experience while using the Site.
If you wish to subscribe to our newsletters, we will use your name and email address to send the newsletter to you. Out of respect for your privacy, we provide you a way to unsubscribe in the email. If you wish to no longer receive our newsletters you may update the settings in your account, follow the instructions located in the email, or you may contact us at privacy@EAPlan.com.
What Information Do We Collect?
Our primary purpose in collecting personal information from you is to provide you with a safe, smooth, efficient, and customized experience. This allows us to provide services and features that most likely meet your needs, and to customize our service to make your experience safer and easier. We only collect personal information about you that we consider necessary for achieving this purpose.
In general, you can browse the Site without telling us who you are or revealing any personal information about yourself. Once you become a User, we require you to provide various contact and identity information, billing information, and other personal information as indicated on the relevant forms on the Site (which vary, depending on what kind of User you are), and you are no longer anonymous to us. Where possible, on these forms we indicate which fields are required and which fields are optional.
In addition, as you use the Site, you can from time to time enter or send to us personal information. For example, if you are a Subscriber, you can enter your own timesheet and other billing information, and if you are a Customer you can enter information about payment of any invoice submitted by a Subscriber. As you use the Site you can also from time to time enter personal information about third parties. For example, if you are a Subscriber, you can enter personal information about your Customers or your staff.
You always have the option to not provide information by choosing not to become a User or by not using the particular feature of the Site for which the information is being collected.
If you are a Subscriber, we collect your credit card information for billing purposes. And if you are a Customer who wishes to pay amounts to a Subscriber on a recurring basis, we collect and store your credit card information for payment purposes.
We also automatically track certain information about you based upon your behaviour on our Site. We use this information to do internal research on our users’ demographics, interests, and behaviour to better understand, protect and serve you and our community. This information may include the URL that you just came from (whether this URL is on our Site or not), which URL you next go to (whether this URL is on our Site or not), your computer browser information, and your IP address.
“Cookies” are small files placed on your hard drive that assist us in providing our services. We use cookies to allow you to enter your password less frequently during a session, and we use data collection devices (such as Google Analytics), including cookies, on certain pages of the Site to help analyze our web page flow, measure promotional effectiveness, and promote trust and safety, to offer certain features that are only available through the use of a cookie and to allow us to provide information that is targeted to your interests. We link the information we store in our cookies to personally identifiable information you submit when you create a EAPlan account. We may use third-party service provides to assist us in monitoring your use of the Site. Information collected by these cookies is also governed by this privacy policy.
Following your registration on the Site, you can review and change your information in your account area. If you disclose personal information in any posting in our forum or blog and wish to have it removed, please contact us at the support contact information listed below, and posted on the Site.
Our Disclosure of Your Information
We will share your personal information with third parties only in the ways that are described in this privacy statement. We do not sell your personal information to third parties. The following describes some of the ways that your information may be disclosed in the normal scope of business to provide our services:
Subscribers and Customers, Etc. In the normal operation of the Site Subscriber timesheets (including information entered by “staff” members) and invoices are disclosed to the applicable Customers, and Customer information is disclosed to the applicable Subscriber. In general, information you enter on the Site is available to the other persons – whether they are Customers, Subscribers, staff members or others – to whom you give access to your account or to whom you give access to the information through the normal operation of the Site.
Payment Information. We use credit card and other payment information (such as PayPal email addresses) you submit to us on the Site to process payments you make through the Site. We do not store credit card or other payment method information unless the Subscriber or their Customers choose to enter credit card information for use in the EAPlan recurring profiles module; in all other cases financial institutions (like PayPal, Authorize.net and PSiGate) have the sole and complete responsibility for the storage of credit card and payment information.
Anonymized Aggregated Data. We aggregate and anonymize sales information including (but not limited to) industry type, number of invoices sent, average invoice size, method of sending invoices, percentage paid online, sales amounts and average sale per customer, and disclose such information in a non-personally identifiable manner to Subscribers. However, in these situations, we do not disclose any information that could be used to identify you personally.
Forum. If you post on our forum or blog your username and other information you include is displayed in your postings or comments, and is therefore available to the public. All of your activities in the public areas of the forum will be identifiable to your User ID, and other people can see your published content.
Subsidiaries and Affiliates; Service Providers. We may from time to time use the services of affiliates, subsidiaries and unrelated service providers in the operation of the Site, and may disclose personal information to them in the course of our use of their services. For example, we may use the services of third-party hosting companies to host the operation of the Site. This may involve the hosting of data, including personal information, on servers operated by those hosting companies. We take care to use only service providers that we believe are reputable and able to live up to our and your expectations, including about the handling of confidential information.
Legal Requests; Emergencies. EAPlan may disclose your personal information (a) to any governmental authority as part of an investigation to determine our compliance with any applicable law, rule, or regulation (including privacy laws, rules, and regulations), (b) in response to a court order, subpoena, discovery request, or other lawful judicial or administrative proceeding, (c) as otherwise required under any applicable law, rule, or regulation, and (d) in good faith, to protect or defend the rights or property of EAPlan and other users.
Your Use of Other Persons’ Information
In order to facilitate the services provided by the Site, the Site allows you in certain circumstances to give other Users limited access to the personal information of other persons. For example, if you are a Subscriber, you may use the Site to give access to a staff member to the personal information of your Customers. By entering into our Terms of Use, you agree that, with respect to the personal information of other persons that you collect, use and disclose on the Site, you have all necessary consents and rights to collect, use and disclose that information as described in this Privacy Policy from time to time, and you agree that the indemnity you give to us in the Terms of Use applies to any non-compliance by you with the foregoing.
If you choose to use our referral service to tell a friend about our site, we will ask you for your friend’s name and email address. We will automatically send your friend a one-time email inviting him or her to visit the site. EAPlan stores this information for the sole purpose of sending this one-time email and tracking the success of our referral program. Your friend may contact us at privacy@EAPlan.com to request that we remove this information from our database.
Security
EAPlan strives to protect your personal information. For security of transactions, we use the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol, which encrypts any information, such as credit card number and billing information, you send to us electronically. The encryption process protects your information, by scrambling it before it is sent to us from your computer. Once EAPlan receives your transmission, we make commercially reasonable efforts to ensure its security on our system. Unfortunately, no data transmission over the Internet can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. As a result, while we strive to protect your personal information, we cannot warrant the security of any information you transmit to us. More information about security is available on the Site.
Other Information Collectors
Except as otherwise expressly included in this Privacy Policy, this document only addresses the use and disclosure of information we collect from you. To the extent that you disclose your information to other parties through the Site, whether they are Subscribers or Customers or otherwise, different rules may apply to their use, collection and disclosure of the personal information you disclose to them. Since we do not control the information use, collection or disclosure policies of third parties, you are subject to their privacy policies. We encourage you to ask questions before you disclose your personal information to others.
Correcting and Updating Your Personal Information
To review and update your personal information to ensure it is accurate, you may login into your account to make the changes, or you may contact us at privacy@EAPlan.com.
Additional Policy Information
Invitations: You have the opportunity to invite others to work with you through your EAPlan account. To do that, EAPlan asks you to import or to manually enter your contacts’ email addresses. As you direct, we then send them an invitation on your behalf or other notices reflecting changes you make to their status in your account.
If you click on a link to a third-party site, you will leave the EAPlan site and go to the site you selected. If you elect to use a third-party product or service in conjunction with EAPlan, you yourself enter into a license agreement with the third party for use of their product or service and their use of your data. Because we cannot control the activities of third parties, we cannot accept responsibility for any use of your personally identifiable information by such third parties, and we cannot guarantee that they will adhere to the same privacy practices as EAPlan. We encourage you to review the privacy statements of any other service provider from whom you request services. If you visit a third party website that is linked to a EAPlan site, you should read that site’s privacy statement before providing any personally identifiable information.
With your consent we may post your testimonial along with your name. If you want your testimonial removed please contact us at privacy@EAPlan.com.
Account Deletion
EAPlan is a complex business network that connects millions of users. EAPlan manages a business eco system that brings together contractors, companies and customers. This network relies on the exchange and sharing of information that is important to others in your network. Tracked hours, sent invoices, paid invoices, contractor invoices are all vital to other people that work with you. These are the official history of work done and moneys paid.
The complexity and connected nature of the system requires that this history exists in perpetuity to accommodate proper function and accounting for the other systems that you have connected to via contracting hours, invoices, estimates. EAPlan cannot guarantee the deletion of all your information.
When a customer chooses to close an account we will remove your information from our marketing and billing systems. This will ensure that there are not further mailings or billings directed towards the canceled user.
As we continue to refine EAPlan we will establish a method for the complete removal of all user information from the system without breaking accepted accounting principles for other connected EAPlan accounts. This document will evolve as these new methods are defined and tested for permanent account deletion. Users wishing to be notified when this development is complete can indicate their wishes via support @ EAPlan.com.
Notification of Privacy Statement Changes
We may update this privacy statement to reflect changes to our information practices. If we make any material changes we will notify you by email (sent to the e-mail address specified in your account) or by means of a notice on this Site prior to the change becoming effective. We encourage you to periodically review this page for the latest information on our privacy practices.
Questions?
It is our goal to make our privacy practices easy to understand. If you have questions, concerns or if you would like more detailed information, please contact us.